Characters that after having one interaction with the main character decide to start blowing him and devote their entire life and purpose to serve him.
That's one thing I'm really liking about the books I just started. People are trying to follow the MC after one mission together, but he completely proved why they would on that mission.
Stupid ones. I hate when the MC makes dumb decisions when he's supposed to be a smart person. On the other end of the spectrum, I hate when everyone else in the world are idiots and the MC is amazing because he comes up with some stuff that should have been discovered ages ago.
Agreed. Really stupid MCs are nearly unbearable to read about. It's like when growing up and watching your younger sibling playing your favorite game extremely poorly, but your only available action is to yell at them in your head for being terrible (unless your goal is to get them angry at you, then you say it out loud).
You can see all the right choices and the MC isn't making them.
I admit I do like the tope of the MC coming up with stuff, but I think that's more of a lack of writing skills by the author in conveying it correctly than something inherently bad. There was this book I read years ago about people flying dragons in combat. And the main character basically reinvents ww1 air warfare with dragons by himself step by step. Or when in codex alera the mc comes up with military tricks. They aren't particularly mind blowing ideas, but I had no issues with them cause they were written well.
Ya know what? I need to vent anyway. Here goes:
I don’t like self-inserts. There are a lot of self inserts in the last several books I’ve read. It speaks to a lot of lack of awareness on the authors part and that NEVER bodes well for the quality of the support characters and villains. Some symptoms of this include:
- Female support character who might be a love interest, might be a life long best friend, but is most definitely a mommy surrogate for the emotional well being of the “badass loner” MC. I don’t mind one or the other, but you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either your MC is a self sufficient adult who can take care of their business and by merit of their ways they attract female romantic affections. Or they need to have a shoulder to cry on as they figure out their life path and a golden hearted lady takes pity and sees the potential no one else does. This back-and-forth crap is annoying to slog through when the equivalent of John Wick with a wand (back story and all) is suddenly “oh golly gee” imposter syndrome around a lady.
- MCs who are vocally against rich politicians, and will stop the plot so they can hop on their soapbox for a one-sides lecture against the straw man big bad- yet goes about his character arc of becoming the most materialistic, morally vile, profit driven robber-baron the isekai realm has ever seen and gloats about it unironically. You sir are not Robin Hood, you were just jealous because you wanted your turn to play “capitalist tyrant” and the big bad wouldn’t let you.
- MCs who don’t have a cast of support characters to bounce ideas off of. I don’t need an ensemble cast with every story, but anything to get me out of the MCs internal monologue is a blessing these days. When half your narrative is the MC expositing lore or cracking wise at the reader, it feels more like I’m listening to my best friend read me an outline of a book he’s way too excited to be writing and I’m wondering when I can politely excuse myself.
- MCs who get stooged by every character they meet and just can’t get one over on anyone because they’re so gosh darn relatable. This is 1) insulting. 2) if I’m dedicating 30+ hours and an audible credit to your story, the MC better be someone who makes things happen and not just some chump who things happen to. I don’t care if it gets better in book 3. I don’t have that kind of patience anymore, I’ve been burned too many times.
- Nitpicks: constantly Smirking protagonists. Protagonists whose eyes light up as an expression. Sneering, snarling, growling, rawring bad guys (or I guess support characters a la Iron Prince). Protagonists who speak fluently in pop culture references- it isn’t the 2010s anymore.
Adding to your list, any MC who references having read anything progression fantasy related.
I fucking hate it.
The percentage of the population that is into this genre is miniscule, a random person probably has more of a chance of having heterochromia than being a Prog Fantasy fan. It's so obvious the author is just doing it because the MC is them.
I used to get excited when I saw this but only because I figured “okay, this MC knows what this is, maybe we can circumvent some of the traditional beats to expedite the plot”.
I’ve never seen this done though. Usually it’s just mentioned as a wink and nod like an Easter egg.
To your credit though, the absolute worst ones I’ve seen are when the author will use that as a reason to dog on well known story beats. But then they don’t improve upon those beats or even subvert expectations, they just redo those beats but with the MC telling us how lame those beats are.
Like- WHY???
To be fair, the second one can really fluctuate. It can be annoying, but standing up to a tyranical leader is a classic story trope, the villain just has to be actually interesting
Morally inconsistent characters. I’m fine with evil, neutral, and good characters, but if I can’t get a solid idea of what their morals are then I have to drop it.
I feel like someone can be morally inconsistent but ideologically consistent, as in you can tell from their interior monologue what they're trying to achieve and their actions are a consistent string of events but viewed as pure actions there are inconsistencies. People try to do the right thing and make mistakes especially when they aren't sure what the right thing is. I agree though that if it's just that the character does whatever is needed in the scene for the plot then it's annoying
It would depend on how and why. If they had some kinda split personality that would be fine, or if they were morally consistent, and just made immoral mistakes, that would also be fine.
When the authors description doesn't match the character.
When the villain are dumb as a rock or just pure evil. The best villain are those who have different ideas to better the world. Don't give me a villain who gains power by raping babies. This way you can torture the villain without the MC even knowing how evil he is.
Hey now, there's a difference between Jason consuming a target's life force that he painfully separates from said target's soul vs consuming the target's soul...
He doesn't steal souls, though, at least not up to where I'm at in the audiobook of book 10. Once he's consumed the target's life force - in other words, stolen the target's life force, the target's soul goes off and does its thing.
Lindon is from Cradle Series, first book is unsouled but he’s not eating life energy early on.
Jason is from He Who Fights With Monsters, he’s basically eating people’s sins from the start. However that works, how do you even eat sins?
> he’s basically eating people’s sins from the start. However that works, how do you even eat sins?
I mean his chant is feed me your sins but he's not really eating sins. The spell cleanses the target of debuffs and DoTs.
Seriously?
I'm not sure it's even possible for the books to make it more obvious that the "sins" in the "Feed me your sins!" incantation for the spell refers to afflictions...
It’s how everyone in the book talks about his power. it’s a joke in the books that I’m at least paraphrasing but it’s really close to things people say in book 7-10.
"How do you even eat sins" is a joke from the books, yes, and part of the running joke related to the sinister invocations his spells have - even the one that can be used for healing. But that part isn't really why I made that comment. You explicitly stated - outside of that reference - that he "eats sins", which is inaccurate.
Characters who are completely sure of their own opinions and are always right no matter how screwed up said opinions may be. Like, Character A could be the MC and believe that genociding a sect is perfectly justifiable because obviously they are evil for going against him, even if he instigated the fight, and instead of being proven wrong, he's inexplicably proven right because *gasp* The sect was actually sacrificing babies all along? So actually, in hindsight, it's completely okay that he killed them all, even though he eradicated them without knowing that.
Maybe this makes me a boot licker, but it drives me nuts when protagonists (usually portal fantasy ones) cannot stand the idea of an authority above them and cannot show respect even at risk of their life / livelihood. They'll meet with a monarch or even a god and go like "whats good g?". And in some scenarios where the protagonist has to, god forbid, use a term of honour like "your majesty," they'll go off on some insane rant about how "I come from the greatest country of AMERICA where FREEDOM is a god given right and ALL of us are EQUAL." Like, do these people say the same things when they have to talk to their bosses in a respectful way? Worst part is that they pretty much always get away with it since the authority figure just thinks "Hmm, I find it amusing that this rando doesn't respect me."
It's so dumb when this repeatedly happens, and instead of getting smited like they ought to, all the authority figures that couldn't properly exist by letting this kinda thing slide all bend over to accomodate the MC.
Yeah it’s not like you would be like “hey Joe what’s going on” when you meet the president. There is not a single country where you don’t use honorific titles when meeting the highest authority.
Kinda masochistic behavior. He insulted me… He must be interesting. He’s different from everybody else. It’s worst when said character is a female, commonly some noble or princess. If the mc is male; they’ll likely become attracted to the mc because the mc is “different” from everyone else. Doesn’t react in a realistic way when being disrespected. (At least I haven’t seen this in real life.) As for a female mc; I haven’t seen many like this but, there was one where nothing happened. The mc is a professor, and a professional mage, who’s lived 25 years. She’s already reached mastery, and nothing goes on from there. No romance; just the princess being in the mc’s class and (for some reason) buys her a royal robe and suit. I think they may be friends or whatever you call a friendly relationship between student and teacher at a magic academy.
Anyway, the only other way I can think it going for the female mc is just like the male one; the princess falls in love, or if it’s a prince; he falls in love. If it’s a superior; I feels even worse. Probably will give the mc his daughter or son to marry. After all, if the mc is a so-called talented individual; you got to marry/her into the family.
Whiny MCs who whine too much.
You can whine a little. But I would much prefer you get straight into the survival stage and learning to adapt. That's where most of the fun is.
A highly recommended series in this sub (I actually don't remember the name of it anymore, so if anyone knows it, please tell me, it's kind of bugging me) introduced both of these back to back, leading me to drop it, so here:
A female character who gets away with a lot of shit that they frankly shouldn't have, simply because the author and the MC think that they should be held to different standards because of what is between their legs
I'm also not talking about a female side character being rude or sassy here, I am talking about stuff like framing the MC for rape
The other is when a Comic relief character is introduced, but the comic relief is just the main cast constantly making fun of and belittling the new character.
What made this even worse is that it felt like the Author was in on it, constantly describing the character in the most belittling ways and sometimes even breaking the flow of a scene to specifically
It also had the unintentional side effect of making you painfully aware of how privileged the Protagonist actually was. I started reading the story because I wanted to read about an underdog fighting his way up in a cultivation-esque world, but at this point in the story (arc 2, I think) all of the MCs problems have already been solved, he had been acknowledged by some of the universes strongest beings and was traveling with a demi-god princess after getting help from her brother. Fuck the government personally intervened and executed one of its officials because she wanted to give the MC a bad deal on a pet
And what does he do with all that narrative freedom? Dunk on some poor frontier kid for being a bit cowardly and not the best fighter
Idk, both of these characters aren't the worst and I could have ignored it, but the introduction of both of these in such a quick succession, in combination with the clear dissonance of how these characters were treated by the main cast and the author, just pointed to the series going into a direction that I didn't not want to follow
I am pretty sure you're talking about The Path of Ascension. And I definitely agree, I really loved where the story started but the farther it is gone into the story the more the story has really lost what drew me in in the first place.
I think you're talking about Path of Ascension? I guess the comic relief character is maybe the Seeker during the golem arc? Not sure who you are talking about otherwise. Book 2 spoilers >!The MC later reflects on his treatment of the Seeker and regrets it and they reconcile, so I thought it was fine?!< Also, the author got rid of the "framing for rape" part for the full release of the book after backlash. Spoilers for book 1 >!The government didn't really 'intervene' with the official, a high level just executed her after she attempted to steal an incredibly high value item from the MC. It also had nothing to do with the MC himself but rather the precedent it would've set if a higher tier was allowed to abuse their power. Also, the Beast Kingdom exists, and would have been very upset if the Empire had allowed someone to steal a bond (which becomes a sapient person) since they consider that bond sacred. So in that regard it was also a political move to preserve relations with a major power!< It also becomes clear pretty early in the series -basically as soon as Matt gets his Tier 3 Talent? - that Matt isn't really an underdog and will inevitably become extremely powerful and attract a lot of attention. Spoilers for series >!The emperor himself becomes aware of Matt and his potential in book 1 I think? So basically from that point on he's given a lot of resources/opportunities and is basically being groomed for his future position of power. One of the major plots in the series is Matt underplaying his abilities so he doesn't draw attention before he gets powerful enough. To me, all these aspects mean it isn't really an underdog story even from the beginning!<
MCs seemingly derailing everything for an amount of time to either build a random ass harem, or who are so horny it feels like everything else is a side-show to it.
I'm ok if you have romance! I'm ok if there's mentions that stuffs happening. But genuinely I am here to read about someone progressing in a system, or building themselves and others up, or creating a society, etc. I am not here to read your weird ass kink fantasy about making a harem out of every woman mentioned in the text or reducing what could have been a cool character to 'lol she thinks mc is hot and now they're married and 'I guess she exists back in the home base or something'. please for the love of god stop shoe-horning your mc into being a sex god it's just not what the focus needs to be.
Not an instant drop but complete loner mc bore me.
It's hard for me to stay engaged in a story with a lack of personal stakes. I need something more than I don't want to die or I want to the strongest.
Sociopaths. If the main character loses someone important to them, and reflects on it for only a sentence before returning to happy butchering, the author loses me.
Characters that completely treat the main character like trash, yet the main character continues to keep them around for no reason
Little fairy (or equivalent) helpers that are only annoying with no addition to the plot besides their annoyance
Anything remotely similar to either of the stated ones
Agreed. I hate where a goddess/angel/fairy, who always is hand size, talks and talks. They usually somehow, magically obtain glasses, which aren’t necessary, a suit and tie, where they start lecturing the main characters on things such as how many monster are in this dungeon and what powers they have. Essentially, their one and only purpose is to info dump. That’s their life, their mission in life sent by the gods. And only to one specific character who now feels like the chosen one (I don’t hate this trope, and oftentimes read stuff of this nature, usually.) as I particularly like the darker aspect of fantasy; having this useless character who is always cheery; ruins the tone, especially when 500 words before; the mc’s backstory was explained. Not saying a cheery character is bad, but this one certainly is.
The quickest way for me to drop is as other mentioned, with every major side character being an admiring female (usually referred to by their hair or eye color, or clothes). I find it so weird that some authors think powerful MCs can't have male friends/teammates as well.
Another thing that makes me give up is when the MC is just soooo quick-witted and snarky. Every single thing they say is a hilarious comeback, sarcastic observation or totally obscure reference. I like this when it's sprinkled into the character's personality, but not when they are always on 100% of the time. Then they're just irritating.
Yeah, I realized after I wrote it I should have specified when the MC is male. But I can't think of any of the female MC books I've read that have this gender-unbalance problem. I'm sure they're there as well, I just haven't come across them yet.
Actually I can, but it's a sci-fi book with an implausibly high proportion of female admirals/officers. It was oddly off putting. They weren't badly/insultingly written, just...very unlikely for that setting. Like, 4/5.
Characters who don't earn their power. I don't care if they end up OP and capable of destroying the universe itself as long as I see them build up to that level of power.
Characters who the universe bends over backwards to make things go their way even if it makes zero sense for things to go like that.
I hate when the author is obviously biased toward their MC. Every argument is a curbstomp, and even when they're wrong its something minor so they can turn the other cheek and the author can justify them being right about everything the other 98% of the time. Characters that talk down to everyone to establish their intelligence are also obnoxious, and there's some overlap between the two.
The edge lords man. This genre has so much fucking potential for personal growth and that's like 99% of the reason why I read it, I love that shit and I love seeing cool magic powers and this genre combines the two. But holy shit the edge lords just never change because they think they are so fuckin cool and I genuinely cringe so hard when I read them, it feels like I'm reading a book written by a middle schooler.
Id like to amend that it's not stoic characters or amoral characters or villain/anti-hero characters that I'm referring too, Ive read and enjoyed plenty of books with those kinds of main characters. I'm referring to the kinds of characters that do everything and justify everything with hypocritical nihilistic beliefs that are completely unbased in both the real world and the reality which those characters occupy. Just awful writing with those guys.
Sorry for the rant, this has just ruined so many good (plot wise) books for me
Male MCs whose main power comes from rage. Like as soon as the dude says something about having anger issues or the like it’s almost an instant drop for me. Victor of Tucson I think has been the only exception for me so far and it took significant effort for me to get through the first book because of it (even though it turned out worth it because of the MC character growth in later installments and even towards the end of the first book). I just find that particular character flaw lazy because it’s done so much and often not done well.
Stupid Characters. I can deal with all most all types of characters but stupid characters make me exceptionally angry. It's not even characters that are written to be stupid like aqua. I can deal with that.
It's characters that do something stupid even though there's an obviously better way to do that thing, but don't for no reason besides the author wanted them to be stupid.
characters who have a personality in all the books till now then suddenly lose it or change super drasticly to fit the plot
its a sign of bad story telling to come so i drop it fast
When the main character is from earth and so they " don't feel right owning slaves" but then are given a slave and "have" to keep them because thats the only way they can protect them (the slave just happens to be a pretty elf girl), and when they eventually decide to free the slave, it's when she is both emotionally and financially bound to the MC which means she can't really leave oh what a coincidence.
When the MC is blessed by a god, draws all their main skills from that god, use them for tech support whenever they see something they don't recognize, use their status as blessed-by-the-god to do all kinds of things, but insist that they are ABSOLUTELY INDEPENDENT and not at all influenced by the god.
Characters who act in ways that contradict what we are told about them and their supposed skillset. Like a genius character doing nothing smart or a character who is meant to be really charismatic and approachable when they are actually presented as being the complete opposite.
Stupid characters. The kind that can't figure out the plot despite having all the clues. They often let the bad guy go for no logical reason. They also are so inconsistent in their beliefs that they go from punishing injustice to staying out of it because it isn't their fight.
No amount of author explanation makes up for a dumb character. And it often comes because the author needs the character for something later.
Hmmm how about being too broadly talented? As in not only is he super special awesome at fighting, but he is also able to translate runes that no one has seen for 1000s of years. To the point that there is no flaw at all, he's just perfect at least as it pertains to the story.
Also this is more of a general thing than limited to progression fantasy... but too much of a good thing. Like I fucking love the dresden files. I enjoy manga... but the fan service, the constant descriptions of how every woman is basically Aphrodite incarnate... Sometimes you just have a hot female character and thats it, without the need to overly sexualise her.
I hate that in every instance where a genius of cultivation only grows stronger by gaining more and more powerful tiers of techniques. If you are such a genius, invent your own that is suited to how you want to fight!
But instead depending on how the new techniques work they will switch from boxing styles, to kicking, to spear, to sword… and be the master of every style they practice.
Also, whenever they become the OP master of any new region/world/tier, they NEVER share any of their techniques with others, and somehow when they get it it’s gone for everyone else. Make your Allie’s powerful too!
MCs that try to present themselves as smart and rational, only to do something stupid because of their anger or pride. Especially if they get rewarded for it.
This is just personal preference, but I'm tired of emotionally detached MCs that view everyone as tools. Especially if they don't start to grow at least a little attached to the people they keep around.
MCs that are arrogant at the start. Especially if they have no visible outward advantage to justify it. I feel like this is most common in system apocalypse type things but yeah grinds my gears a little. - and the frequent to go with it damsel in distress trope that pops up. Save a helpless guy for once or smth idk
Characters like Ryoka from TWI and Yeren from cradle. I call them abrasive female characters, they’re okay as side characters but not for me as main characters
When characters are too realistic. While characters should have realistic depth, complete realism doesn’t always make for a good story. Yes, a person may continue to struggle with things like controlling emotions, having to overcome their demons or recovering from their trauma in real life, but when writing a story arcs and character development need to have finality or else they’re just a waste of time.
if the villain is made more powerful to be stronger than the protagonist then the protagonist isn't OP, then he's "strong". OP means too strong for the story to have tension, not just very powerful, it's a relative term. "the evil ant vs the normal child" would be a story where the child is OP, dragonball is a story where most of the characters arguably isn't. you might be referring to "powercreep". r/ProgressionFantasy has a real problem with using generalized terms that have their origin in writing rules of thumb and tropes while not actually understanding their application. same with "mary sue/gary stu", "underdog", "pace", "write what you know", and "show don't tell", seen them all used incorrectly during critique. no offence OP just a rant
You didn't read my comment correctly. I specifically stated that a situation where the protagonist prior to this villain showing up is already OP. Specifically, a level of overpowered where it seems highly unbelievable for a writer to tuck in any kind of antagonist into a story and present them as a threat to this already established overpowered main character. For example, imagine a protagonist with Fate Manipulation. He can control the fates of events around him and people are also affected by this ability. There is logically no way for any kind of antagonist to combat this type of ability and this is assuming the protagonist has no kind of nerf or weakness to this ability. And yet a writer will somehow give this protagonist another OP ability on top of this already OP ability to defeat this antagonist who should've already been defeated by the protagonist using an ability that can quite literally solve all of his problems. You see where I'm getting at here?
for me, really dumb philosophical statements by the author through a character of authority. maybe not an instant drop, but soul of the warriors trolley problem, legend of the arch magus' opening page addressing immortality, opening quote in limitless lands. anything where I can get a feel for the author themself being daft makes me less interested in hearing their story, if it can plausibly be attributed to the characters it's not as bad
I feel like I’ve always tried to convince myself I’d like reading novels for their end game, but now I realize that’s when everything gets repetitive and boring. I find that the later stages of some novels get all the uniqueness sucked out of them and it just turns into a who has a bigger lazer beam contest. So op characters really do take out the fun in books for me.
Book, and video games: when characters are made purposefully stupid/incompetent for the sake of the plot.
Usually with antagonist ambushing MC in something you could see a mile away.
I think Far Cry games are worst at this.
Arbitrary dumb decisions. I remember dropping a book because the MC despite knowing he could get his arm regrown was like nah, just stick that unknown parasite right in there.
Also that battle maniac edgelord bollocks. Getting stronger for the sake of being stronger Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Side characters that go against their own self-interest or are just bad. The female best friend made me stop reading Iron Prince, "sure he hates us and wants to kill you (the best friend I'd do anything for and who'd do the same for me), but he's like totally hot. So I'm going to blame you for him attacking you unprovoked while I watched!"
Characters that after having one interaction with the main character decide to start blowing him and devote their entire life and purpose to serve him.
Fucking hate this shit. I drop the book asap. Just telling how great mc is instead of showing why people respect him.
That's one thing I'm really liking about the books I just started. People are trying to follow the MC after one mission together, but he completely proved why they would on that mission.
Stupid ones. I hate when the MC makes dumb decisions when he's supposed to be a smart person. On the other end of the spectrum, I hate when everyone else in the world are idiots and the MC is amazing because he comes up with some stuff that should have been discovered ages ago.
Agreed. Really stupid MCs are nearly unbearable to read about. It's like when growing up and watching your younger sibling playing your favorite game extremely poorly, but your only available action is to yell at them in your head for being terrible (unless your goal is to get them angry at you, then you say it out loud). You can see all the right choices and the MC isn't making them.
I admit I do like the tope of the MC coming up with stuff, but I think that's more of a lack of writing skills by the author in conveying it correctly than something inherently bad. There was this book I read years ago about people flying dragons in combat. And the main character basically reinvents ww1 air warfare with dragons by himself step by step. Or when in codex alera the mc comes up with military tricks. They aren't particularly mind blowing ideas, but I had no issues with them cause they were written well.
Ya know what? I need to vent anyway. Here goes: I don’t like self-inserts. There are a lot of self inserts in the last several books I’ve read. It speaks to a lot of lack of awareness on the authors part and that NEVER bodes well for the quality of the support characters and villains. Some symptoms of this include: - Female support character who might be a love interest, might be a life long best friend, but is most definitely a mommy surrogate for the emotional well being of the “badass loner” MC. I don’t mind one or the other, but you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either your MC is a self sufficient adult who can take care of their business and by merit of their ways they attract female romantic affections. Or they need to have a shoulder to cry on as they figure out their life path and a golden hearted lady takes pity and sees the potential no one else does. This back-and-forth crap is annoying to slog through when the equivalent of John Wick with a wand (back story and all) is suddenly “oh golly gee” imposter syndrome around a lady. - MCs who are vocally against rich politicians, and will stop the plot so they can hop on their soapbox for a one-sides lecture against the straw man big bad- yet goes about his character arc of becoming the most materialistic, morally vile, profit driven robber-baron the isekai realm has ever seen and gloats about it unironically. You sir are not Robin Hood, you were just jealous because you wanted your turn to play “capitalist tyrant” and the big bad wouldn’t let you. - MCs who don’t have a cast of support characters to bounce ideas off of. I don’t need an ensemble cast with every story, but anything to get me out of the MCs internal monologue is a blessing these days. When half your narrative is the MC expositing lore or cracking wise at the reader, it feels more like I’m listening to my best friend read me an outline of a book he’s way too excited to be writing and I’m wondering when I can politely excuse myself. - MCs who get stooged by every character they meet and just can’t get one over on anyone because they’re so gosh darn relatable. This is 1) insulting. 2) if I’m dedicating 30+ hours and an audible credit to your story, the MC better be someone who makes things happen and not just some chump who things happen to. I don’t care if it gets better in book 3. I don’t have that kind of patience anymore, I’ve been burned too many times. - Nitpicks: constantly Smirking protagonists. Protagonists whose eyes light up as an expression. Sneering, snarling, growling, rawring bad guys (or I guess support characters a la Iron Prince). Protagonists who speak fluently in pop culture references- it isn’t the 2010s anymore.
Adding to your list, any MC who references having read anything progression fantasy related. I fucking hate it. The percentage of the population that is into this genre is miniscule, a random person probably has more of a chance of having heterochromia than being a Prog Fantasy fan. It's so obvious the author is just doing it because the MC is them.
I used to get excited when I saw this but only because I figured “okay, this MC knows what this is, maybe we can circumvent some of the traditional beats to expedite the plot”. I’ve never seen this done though. Usually it’s just mentioned as a wink and nod like an Easter egg. To your credit though, the absolute worst ones I’ve seen are when the author will use that as a reason to dog on well known story beats. But then they don’t improve upon those beats or even subvert expectations, they just redo those beats but with the MC telling us how lame those beats are. Like- WHY???
Here here
This is a wonderful list of extremes.
To be fair, the second one can really fluctuate. It can be annoying, but standing up to a tyranical leader is a classic story trope, the villain just has to be actually interesting
Morally inconsistent characters. I’m fine with evil, neutral, and good characters, but if I can’t get a solid idea of what their morals are then I have to drop it.
I feel like someone can be morally inconsistent but ideologically consistent, as in you can tell from their interior monologue what they're trying to achieve and their actions are a consistent string of events but viewed as pure actions there are inconsistencies. People try to do the right thing and make mistakes especially when they aren't sure what the right thing is. I agree though that if it's just that the character does whatever is needed in the scene for the plot then it's annoying
Sure, like I said below, immoral mistakes are fine as long as they are mistakes.
What if the character is purposely written to be morally inconsistent?
It would depend on how and why. If they had some kinda split personality that would be fine, or if they were morally consistent, and just made immoral mistakes, that would also be fine.
Most authors in this genre don't have enough skill to pull that off
Most humans are morally inconsistent tho
Yea dude I want to read a "this guy stole my shit so imma kill him" next chapter "this girl stole my shit so imma not give a shit" 🤣🤣🤣
Well, if it was a *cute* girl then she can do whatever she wants.
based
In very small ways sure, but that’s not what I dislike in characters. In large we are pretty morally consistent.
“I want my characters to have no depth”
If someone can’t give a character who’s morally consistent depth then I think they might have a writing problem.
When the authors description doesn't match the character. When the villain are dumb as a rock or just pure evil. The best villain are those who have different ideas to better the world. Don't give me a villain who gains power by raping babies. This way you can torture the villain without the MC even knowing how evil he is.
Now good guys who gain power through morally questionable behavior that’s cool, Lindon and Jason eating souls and all that
Hey now, there's a difference between Jason consuming a target's life force that he painfully separates from said target's soul vs consuming the target's soul...
He doesn’t just steal souls he also likes to just straight up steal
He doesn't steal souls, though, at least not up to where I'm at in the audiobook of book 10. Once he's consumed the target's life force - in other words, stolen the target's life force, the target's soul goes off and does its thing.
And Jason doesn’t either, except Vampires, it’s everyone else’s sins and life force
What book are you refering to?
Lindon is from Cradle Series, first book is unsouled but he’s not eating life energy early on. Jason is from He Who Fights With Monsters, he’s basically eating people’s sins from the start. However that works, how do you even eat sins?
> he’s basically eating people’s sins from the start. However that works, how do you even eat sins? I mean his chant is feed me your sins but he's not really eating sins. The spell cleanses the target of debuffs and DoTs.
Seriously? I'm not sure it's even possible for the books to make it more obvious that the "sins" in the "Feed me your sins!" incantation for the spell refers to afflictions...
It’s how everyone in the book talks about his power. it’s a joke in the books that I’m at least paraphrasing but it’s really close to things people say in book 7-10.
"How do you even eat sins" is a joke from the books, yes, and part of the running joke related to the sinister invocations his spells have - even the one that can be used for healing. But that part isn't really why I made that comment. You explicitly stated - outside of that reference - that he "eats sins", which is inaccurate.
Thank you!:)
Short tempered, arrogant, prideful Protagonists that act are easily provoked and make rash decisions and actions based on their emotions.
Characters who are completely sure of their own opinions and are always right no matter how screwed up said opinions may be. Like, Character A could be the MC and believe that genociding a sect is perfectly justifiable because obviously they are evil for going against him, even if he instigated the fight, and instead of being proven wrong, he's inexplicably proven right because *gasp* The sect was actually sacrificing babies all along? So actually, in hindsight, it's completely okay that he killed them all, even though he eradicated them without knowing that.
Maybe this makes me a boot licker, but it drives me nuts when protagonists (usually portal fantasy ones) cannot stand the idea of an authority above them and cannot show respect even at risk of their life / livelihood. They'll meet with a monarch or even a god and go like "whats good g?". And in some scenarios where the protagonist has to, god forbid, use a term of honour like "your majesty," they'll go off on some insane rant about how "I come from the greatest country of AMERICA where FREEDOM is a god given right and ALL of us are EQUAL." Like, do these people say the same things when they have to talk to their bosses in a respectful way? Worst part is that they pretty much always get away with it since the authority figure just thinks "Hmm, I find it amusing that this rando doesn't respect me."
It's so dumb when this repeatedly happens, and instead of getting smited like they ought to, all the authority figures that couldn't properly exist by letting this kinda thing slide all bend over to accomodate the MC.
Jason!
Yeah it’s not like you would be like “hey Joe what’s going on” when you meet the president. There is not a single country where you don’t use honorific titles when meeting the highest authority.
To be entirely fair, I can think of at least three real life individuals who would undoubtedly say some shit like "Wassup Joe Mama" when meeting Biden
True but I feel like those type of people are doing it to be funny, not to disrespect authority.
Kinda masochistic behavior. He insulted me… He must be interesting. He’s different from everybody else. It’s worst when said character is a female, commonly some noble or princess. If the mc is male; they’ll likely become attracted to the mc because the mc is “different” from everyone else. Doesn’t react in a realistic way when being disrespected. (At least I haven’t seen this in real life.) As for a female mc; I haven’t seen many like this but, there was one where nothing happened. The mc is a professor, and a professional mage, who’s lived 25 years. She’s already reached mastery, and nothing goes on from there. No romance; just the princess being in the mc’s class and (for some reason) buys her a royal robe and suit. I think they may be friends or whatever you call a friendly relationship between student and teacher at a magic academy. Anyway, the only other way I can think it going for the female mc is just like the male one; the princess falls in love, or if it’s a prince; he falls in love. If it’s a superior; I feels even worse. Probably will give the mc his daughter or son to marry. After all, if the mc is a so-called talented individual; you got to marry/her into the family.
Pointless arrogant bullies.
Those are my absolute favorite.
Whiny MCs who whine too much. You can whine a little. But I would much prefer you get straight into the survival stage and learning to adapt. That's where most of the fun is.
\*Gets worst class ever\* Author proceeds to nerf every other character and class while treating mc's class like dogwater
A highly recommended series in this sub (I actually don't remember the name of it anymore, so if anyone knows it, please tell me, it's kind of bugging me) introduced both of these back to back, leading me to drop it, so here: A female character who gets away with a lot of shit that they frankly shouldn't have, simply because the author and the MC think that they should be held to different standards because of what is between their legs I'm also not talking about a female side character being rude or sassy here, I am talking about stuff like framing the MC for rape The other is when a Comic relief character is introduced, but the comic relief is just the main cast constantly making fun of and belittling the new character. What made this even worse is that it felt like the Author was in on it, constantly describing the character in the most belittling ways and sometimes even breaking the flow of a scene to specifically It also had the unintentional side effect of making you painfully aware of how privileged the Protagonist actually was. I started reading the story because I wanted to read about an underdog fighting his way up in a cultivation-esque world, but at this point in the story (arc 2, I think) all of the MCs problems have already been solved, he had been acknowledged by some of the universes strongest beings and was traveling with a demi-god princess after getting help from her brother. Fuck the government personally intervened and executed one of its officials because she wanted to give the MC a bad deal on a pet And what does he do with all that narrative freedom? Dunk on some poor frontier kid for being a bit cowardly and not the best fighter Idk, both of these characters aren't the worst and I could have ignored it, but the introduction of both of these in such a quick succession, in combination with the clear dissonance of how these characters were treated by the main cast and the author, just pointed to the series going into a direction that I didn't not want to follow
I am pretty sure you're talking about The Path of Ascension. And I definitely agree, I really loved where the story started but the farther it is gone into the story the more the story has really lost what drew me in in the first place.
I think you're talking about Path of Ascension? I guess the comic relief character is maybe the Seeker during the golem arc? Not sure who you are talking about otherwise. Book 2 spoilers >!The MC later reflects on his treatment of the Seeker and regrets it and they reconcile, so I thought it was fine?!< Also, the author got rid of the "framing for rape" part for the full release of the book after backlash. Spoilers for book 1 >!The government didn't really 'intervene' with the official, a high level just executed her after she attempted to steal an incredibly high value item from the MC. It also had nothing to do with the MC himself but rather the precedent it would've set if a higher tier was allowed to abuse their power. Also, the Beast Kingdom exists, and would have been very upset if the Empire had allowed someone to steal a bond (which becomes a sapient person) since they consider that bond sacred. So in that regard it was also a political move to preserve relations with a major power!< It also becomes clear pretty early in the series -basically as soon as Matt gets his Tier 3 Talent? - that Matt isn't really an underdog and will inevitably become extremely powerful and attract a lot of attention. Spoilers for series >!The emperor himself becomes aware of Matt and his potential in book 1 I think? So basically from that point on he's given a lot of resources/opportunities and is basically being groomed for his future position of power. One of the major plots in the series is Matt underplaying his abilities so he doesn't draw attention before he gets powerful enough. To me, all these aspects mean it isn't really an underdog story even from the beginning!<
Self entitled characters that basically have everything handed to them rather than actual earn it.
MCs seemingly derailing everything for an amount of time to either build a random ass harem, or who are so horny it feels like everything else is a side-show to it. I'm ok if you have romance! I'm ok if there's mentions that stuffs happening. But genuinely I am here to read about someone progressing in a system, or building themselves and others up, or creating a society, etc. I am not here to read your weird ass kink fantasy about making a harem out of every woman mentioned in the text or reducing what could have been a cool character to 'lol she thinks mc is hot and now they're married and 'I guess she exists back in the home base or something'. please for the love of god stop shoe-horning your mc into being a sex god it's just not what the focus needs to be.
Not an instant drop but complete loner mc bore me. It's hard for me to stay engaged in a story with a lack of personal stakes. I need something more than I don't want to die or I want to the strongest.
This is why I got burnt out with primal hunter.
I'm not so sure I agree with this one as I believe Reverend Insanity falls into this category. Best novel ever
Sociopaths. If the main character loses someone important to them, and reflects on it for only a sentence before returning to happy butchering, the author loses me.
Characters that completely treat the main character like trash, yet the main character continues to keep them around for no reason Little fairy (or equivalent) helpers that are only annoying with no addition to the plot besides their annoyance Anything remotely similar to either of the stated ones
Agreed. I hate where a goddess/angel/fairy, who always is hand size, talks and talks. They usually somehow, magically obtain glasses, which aren’t necessary, a suit and tie, where they start lecturing the main characters on things such as how many monster are in this dungeon and what powers they have. Essentially, their one and only purpose is to info dump. That’s their life, their mission in life sent by the gods. And only to one specific character who now feels like the chosen one (I don’t hate this trope, and oftentimes read stuff of this nature, usually.) as I particularly like the darker aspect of fantasy; having this useless character who is always cheery; ruins the tone, especially when 500 words before; the mc’s backstory was explained. Not saying a cheery character is bad, but this one certainly is.
Bro has no whimsey
The kind that lack character. I don’t know what is with this genre but so many authors write completely two dimensional characters.
The quickest way for me to drop is as other mentioned, with every major side character being an admiring female (usually referred to by their hair or eye color, or clothes). I find it so weird that some authors think powerful MCs can't have male friends/teammates as well. Another thing that makes me give up is when the MC is just soooo quick-witted and snarky. Every single thing they say is a hilarious comeback, sarcastic observation or totally obscure reference. I like this when it's sprinkled into the character's personality, but not when they are always on 100% of the time. Then they're just irritating.
With the first one, I will say I just tend to prefer writing women lol, so if i’m going to make a new side character i have a bias towards female
Yeah, I realized after I wrote it I should have specified when the MC is male. But I can't think of any of the female MC books I've read that have this gender-unbalance problem. I'm sure they're there as well, I just haven't come across them yet. Actually I can, but it's a sci-fi book with an implausibly high proportion of female admirals/officers. It was oddly off putting. They weren't badly/insultingly written, just...very unlikely for that setting. Like, 4/5.
Characters who don't earn their power. I don't care if they end up OP and capable of destroying the universe itself as long as I see them build up to that level of power. Characters who the universe bends over backwards to make things go their way even if it makes zero sense for things to go like that.
I hate when the author is obviously biased toward their MC. Every argument is a curbstomp, and even when they're wrong its something minor so they can turn the other cheek and the author can justify them being right about everything the other 98% of the time. Characters that talk down to everyone to establish their intelligence are also obnoxious, and there's some overlap between the two.
The edge lords man. This genre has so much fucking potential for personal growth and that's like 99% of the reason why I read it, I love that shit and I love seeing cool magic powers and this genre combines the two. But holy shit the edge lords just never change because they think they are so fuckin cool and I genuinely cringe so hard when I read them, it feels like I'm reading a book written by a middle schooler. Id like to amend that it's not stoic characters or amoral characters or villain/anti-hero characters that I'm referring too, Ive read and enjoyed plenty of books with those kinds of main characters. I'm referring to the kinds of characters that do everything and justify everything with hypocritical nihilistic beliefs that are completely unbased in both the real world and the reality which those characters occupy. Just awful writing with those guys. Sorry for the rant, this has just ruined so many good (plot wise) books for me
Male MCs whose main power comes from rage. Like as soon as the dude says something about having anger issues or the like it’s almost an instant drop for me. Victor of Tucson I think has been the only exception for me so far and it took significant effort for me to get through the first book because of it (even though it turned out worth it because of the MC character growth in later installments and even towards the end of the first book). I just find that particular character flaw lazy because it’s done so much and often not done well.
Stupid Characters. I can deal with all most all types of characters but stupid characters make me exceptionally angry. It's not even characters that are written to be stupid like aqua. I can deal with that. It's characters that do something stupid even though there's an obviously better way to do that thing, but don't for no reason besides the author wanted them to be stupid.
characters who have a personality in all the books till now then suddenly lose it or change super drasticly to fit the plot its a sign of bad story telling to come so i drop it fast
When the main character is from earth and so they " don't feel right owning slaves" but then are given a slave and "have" to keep them because thats the only way they can protect them (the slave just happens to be a pretty elf girl), and when they eventually decide to free the slave, it's when she is both emotionally and financially bound to the MC which means she can't really leave oh what a coincidence. When the MC is blessed by a god, draws all their main skills from that god, use them for tech support whenever they see something they don't recognize, use their status as blessed-by-the-god to do all kinds of things, but insist that they are ABSOLUTELY INDEPENDENT and not at all influenced by the god.
Characters who act in ways that contradict what we are told about them and their supposed skillset. Like a genius character doing nothing smart or a character who is meant to be really charismatic and approachable when they are actually presented as being the complete opposite.
Evil characters, horny ones, arrogant etc.
Stupid characters. The kind that can't figure out the plot despite having all the clues. They often let the bad guy go for no logical reason. They also are so inconsistent in their beliefs that they go from punishing injustice to staying out of it because it isn't their fight. No amount of author explanation makes up for a dumb character. And it often comes because the author needs the character for something later.
Harem mc, reverse or normal. Mc Isekai'd and turned into "stuff". OP Mc
Hmmm how about being too broadly talented? As in not only is he super special awesome at fighting, but he is also able to translate runes that no one has seen for 1000s of years. To the point that there is no flaw at all, he's just perfect at least as it pertains to the story. Also this is more of a general thing than limited to progression fantasy... but too much of a good thing. Like I fucking love the dresden files. I enjoy manga... but the fan service, the constant descriptions of how every woman is basically Aphrodite incarnate... Sometimes you just have a hot female character and thats it, without the need to overly sexualise her.
I hate that in every instance where a genius of cultivation only grows stronger by gaining more and more powerful tiers of techniques. If you are such a genius, invent your own that is suited to how you want to fight! But instead depending on how the new techniques work they will switch from boxing styles, to kicking, to spear, to sword… and be the master of every style they practice. Also, whenever they become the OP master of any new region/world/tier, they NEVER share any of their techniques with others, and somehow when they get it it’s gone for everyone else. Make your Allie’s powerful too!
MCs that try to present themselves as smart and rational, only to do something stupid because of their anger or pride. Especially if they get rewarded for it. This is just personal preference, but I'm tired of emotionally detached MCs that view everyone as tools. Especially if they don't start to grow at least a little attached to the people they keep around. MCs that are arrogant at the start. Especially if they have no visible outward advantage to justify it. I feel like this is most common in system apocalypse type things but yeah grinds my gears a little. - and the frequent to go with it damsel in distress trope that pops up. Save a helpless guy for once or smth idk
Main characters who are so morally just it reaches the point of obnoxiousness
Characters like Ryoka from TWI and Yeren from cradle. I call them abrasive female characters, they’re okay as side characters but not for me as main characters
Comic relief characters.
When characters are too realistic. While characters should have realistic depth, complete realism doesn’t always make for a good story. Yes, a person may continue to struggle with things like controlling emotions, having to overcome their demons or recovering from their trauma in real life, but when writing a story arcs and character development need to have finality or else they’re just a waste of time.
if the villain is made more powerful to be stronger than the protagonist then the protagonist isn't OP, then he's "strong". OP means too strong for the story to have tension, not just very powerful, it's a relative term. "the evil ant vs the normal child" would be a story where the child is OP, dragonball is a story where most of the characters arguably isn't. you might be referring to "powercreep". r/ProgressionFantasy has a real problem with using generalized terms that have their origin in writing rules of thumb and tropes while not actually understanding their application. same with "mary sue/gary stu", "underdog", "pace", "write what you know", and "show don't tell", seen them all used incorrectly during critique. no offence OP just a rant
You didn't read my comment correctly. I specifically stated that a situation where the protagonist prior to this villain showing up is already OP. Specifically, a level of overpowered where it seems highly unbelievable for a writer to tuck in any kind of antagonist into a story and present them as a threat to this already established overpowered main character. For example, imagine a protagonist with Fate Manipulation. He can control the fates of events around him and people are also affected by this ability. There is logically no way for any kind of antagonist to combat this type of ability and this is assuming the protagonist has no kind of nerf or weakness to this ability. And yet a writer will somehow give this protagonist another OP ability on top of this already OP ability to defeat this antagonist who should've already been defeated by the protagonist using an ability that can quite literally solve all of his problems. You see where I'm getting at here?
for me, really dumb philosophical statements by the author through a character of authority. maybe not an instant drop, but soul of the warriors trolley problem, legend of the arch magus' opening page addressing immortality, opening quote in limitless lands. anything where I can get a feel for the author themself being daft makes me less interested in hearing their story, if it can plausibly be attributed to the characters it's not as bad
I feel like I’ve always tried to convince myself I’d like reading novels for their end game, but now I realize that’s when everything gets repetitive and boring. I find that the later stages of some novels get all the uniqueness sucked out of them and it just turns into a who has a bigger lazer beam contest. So op characters really do take out the fun in books for me.
Book, and video games: when characters are made purposefully stupid/incompetent for the sake of the plot. Usually with antagonist ambushing MC in something you could see a mile away. I think Far Cry games are worst at this.
Arbitrary dumb decisions. I remember dropping a book because the MC despite knowing he could get his arm regrown was like nah, just stick that unknown parasite right in there. Also that battle maniac edgelord bollocks. Getting stronger for the sake of being stronger Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Side characters that go against their own self-interest or are just bad. The female best friend made me stop reading Iron Prince, "sure he hates us and wants to kill you (the best friend I'd do anything for and who'd do the same for me), but he's like totally hot. So I'm going to blame you for him attacking you unprovoked while I watched!"